Session Information
10 SES 07 C, Enhancing the Quality of Teacher Education
Paper Session
Contribution
All children and adolescents need to develop academic literacies in order to succeed in modern life (OECD, 2015). This requires teaching designs in which cross disciplinary knowledge is integrated and in which the close relationship between writing and learning is foregrounded (Lea and Street 2006). However, to design for such integrated teaching has for long been a challenge particularly in the teaching of “hard science” disciplines, such as mathematics (Neuman 2002). To integrate subject expertise with relational expertise across different domains requires the courage and capability to teach in new and varied ways, prepare students for uncertainty and not just adopt to institutionalised core practices (Edwards, Gilroy and Hartley 2002, Hargreaves 2003).
Such expectations put demands on teacher educators, because as Macken-Horarik et al. (2006) argue; only those student teachers who learn to control academic literacies can become teachers who will be able to scaffold these same competencies in young learners. However, we will argue, this is not a task that can be left to individual teachers only, but has to be supported by institutional structures and leaders who facilitate collaboration on new teaching practices. From such perspectives, how teacher educators in Initial Teacher Education (ITE) may facilitate student teachers’ learning of subject knowledge and skills integrated with pedagogy and didactics continuously warrant research.
In this paper we provide an example of an “excellent” teaching design in ITE through one teacher educator’s narrative on her teaching practice in mathematics and her students’ experiences with her teaching. This teacher educator (called Hege) was by her students described as quite unique and that the way she taught, had been especially significant for their learning outcome. The following quotation demonstrates a common opinion: “So we learnt more directly from her. She used didactics with us that we can use in the same way with our pupils when we become teachers”. What her students underlined was the way Hege engaged in teaching and how she facilitated peer response using different teaching strategies and feedback patterns. One student exemplified how Hege responded carefully to students’ texts: “We listened to her and got an idea about how it should be done”. The unison account of the quality of Hege’s teaching made us curious about how Hege herself described and reflected upon her own teaching. We therefore interviewed her to seek answers to the following research questions:
• What characterises Hege’s teaching design in mathematics and how does she use writing in order to scaffold students’ learning?
• What may be learned from Hege’s teaching design and what are the possible implications relevant for teacher education in a broader sense?
We unpack Hege’s teaching design and how she facilitates learning academic literacy in mathematics and the writing pedagogy in which it is embedded. At core is how she uses tools and strategies that scaffold student teachers’ learning. The study is framed within an academic literacies stance conceptualizing student writing as a socially situated discourse practice (Abdulwahed, Jaworski and Crawford 2012; Ivanic 2004; Lea and Street 1998; Macken-Horarik et al. 2006) recognizing the central role of literacy practices in the success, or failure, of students’ learning in higher education (Tuck 2012). The concept of teaching design is used to demonstrate the relationship between a design for teaching developed by teachers, and a design for learning developed by students when learning both the discipline mathematics and its didactics (Vestøl 2016).
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Abdulwahed, M., Jaworski. B and Crawford. A ( 2012).: Innovative approaches to teaching mathematics in higher education: a review and critique. Nordic Studies in Mathematics Education, 17 (2), pp. 49 - 68 Alvesson, M., and Sköldberg, K. (2000). Reflexive methodology: New vistas for qualitative research. London: Sage Publications. Darling-Hammond, L. and Hammerness, K. (2005). The Design of Teacher Education Programs. In L. Darling-Hammond and J. Bransford (Eds.), Preparing Teachers for a Changing World (pp. 390–441). San Fransisco: Jossey-Bass. Edwards, A., Gilroy, P., and Hartley, D. (2002). Rethinking Teacher Education: Collaborative responses to uncertainty. London: RoutledgeFalmer. Hargreaves, A. (2003). Teaching in the Knowledge Society: education in the age of insecurity. Maidenhead, UK and Philadelphia, PA: Open University Press Helstad, K and Lund, A (2012). Teachers' talk on students' writing: Negotiating students' texts in interdisciplinary teacher teams. Teaching and Teacher Education: An International Journal of Research and Studies. 28(4), s 599- 608 Ivanič, R. (2004). Discourses of writing and learning to write. Language and Education, 18(3), 220-245 Lea, M. R., and Street, B. V. (1998). Student writing in higher education: An academic literacies approach. Studies in Higher Education, 23(2), 157–172 Macken-Horaik, M., Devereux, L., Trimingham-Jack, C., and Wilson, K. (2006). Negotiating the territory of tertiary literacies: A case study of teacher education. Linguistics and Education, 17, 240–257. OECD (2015) Skills for Social Progress: The Power of Social and Emotional Skills. OECD Publishing, Paris. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264226159-en Solbrekke, T. D. and Helstad, K (2016). Student formation in higher education: teaching approaches matter. Teaching in Higher Education. 14(1), 73–94. Tuck, J. (2012). Feedback-giving as social practice: Academic teachers’ perspectives on feedback as institutional requirement work and dialogue. Teaching in Higher Education, 17(2), 209-221. Vestøl, Jon Magne (2016). Design, Integration, and Quality. Teacher Education from the Perspective of ProTed, a Norwegian Centre of Excellence in Education. Acta Didactica Norge - tidsskrift for fagdidaktisk forsknings- og utviklingsarbeid i Norge. 10(2), s 73- 91 Wittek, L, Solbrekke, T and Helstad, K (forthcoming 2017) “You Learn How to Write from Doing the Writing, But You Also Learn the Subject and the Ways of Reasoning” Outlines: Critical Practice Studies.
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